


Friend Me

by Susan



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: M/M, Older Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-10
Updated: 2011-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-23 15:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Susan/pseuds/Susan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hutch opens a Facebook account.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friend Me

Friend Me  


  
   


Hutch opened a Facebook account yesterday.Filled out all the information they asked, picked a password – Lancelot probably, he uses the same damn password for everything. He thinks I don’t know, but after thirty years, there aren’t that many things I don’t.

This morning, when I opened my Yahoo e-mail, I found out he’d sent a request to “friend” me. I answered the request the old-fashioned way.

“Hey, Hutch. Get in here.” Here was my office. Formerly Molly’s room. Formerly the spare bedroom.We keep meaning to paint the lavender walls a more manly shade, and pack away her stuff, but we never get around to it. I admit I like sitting at the old white desk and staring at all her softball trophies lined up on bookshelves against one wall. I coached most of those games myself so I feel like I still got some say in what happens to them. I quit coaching when Molly finished college and moved in with Liz. She and Liz and their kids come over every Sunday for dinner, and sooner or later we end up talking about the old days.That’s when Dakota and Gracie escape to watch TV in the den.

Hutch finally appeared at the bedroom door. “I was getting dressed. “

I could see his reflection in the computer screen. “Liar. You’re still naked.” _And still sexy._

“How astute. Why did you call me?”

I turned around to face him. Thought about taking him back to bed. “Why did you send me a friend request?”

“A what? Oh. The Facebook thing.Guess I thought you’d be upset if I didn’t. Wouldn’t you be?”

I shook my head. “Not really, no.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to be my friend?” His voice rose a little.

“Are we about to have a fight, Hutch? Because if we are, go get dressed first. I can’t concentrate when you’re naked.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” And he stomped off.He didn’t come back, so I figured that was that.

 

 I ignored the friend request. I live with him. I do his laundry (half the time).Make his dinner (some of the time).I have sex with the guy (not as many times as I’d like, but still . . .). Do I need to be his cyber friend too? I didn’t think so.

Hutch didn’t mention Facebook the rest of the day. Or the next. But the morning after that, he said between bites of oatmeal, “Something wrong with your e-mail, Starsk?”

Fuck. I knew where this was going. “Don’t think so. You going to finish that banana?”

He slid the half-peeled banana across the table and I sliced it into my Froot Loops.

“The friend request. You never answered it,” Hutch said. He got up to refill his coffee mug and sat down again without refilling mine.The alarm siren blasted in my head. _Danger, danger, Will Robinson._

“Didn’t I?”I think I might have batted my eyelashes a little, but I hope not.

“Nope. You have a problem with being my friend, Starsk?”

“Not in real life, I don’t.But online is . . . you know, online. It seems . . . redundant.”I chased the last Froot Loop around the bowl and didn’t look up.

“Fine. Forget I asked.”Fine is Hutch-speak for not-fine. He picked up the sports section and began to read it. Just so I couldn’t.

After a minute, I handed him his reading glasses. “Here, if you’re going to pretend to care about the baseball scores, at least be able to see them.”I stood up and kissed the top of his head and went for a walk.

He absolutely hates it when I kiss the top of his head. Probably because it reminds him of how little hair he has left up there.

No one would ever accuse us of fighting like grownups.

 

I didn’t walk far. Just over to Liz and Molly’s house – all the fights she had with us about wanting her independence and what does she do? Moves three blocks away.

Molly moved in with us when she was thirteen.It wasn’t easy, and there were times when I thought Hutch and me had made a huge mistake. Molly knew how to push our buttons – the cigarettes, skipping school, breaking curfew.

But we all survived. Molly teaches math at the local high school and coaches the softball team. She met Liz in first year calculus at UCLA and brought her home to dinner that Thanksgiving, daring us not to like her, daring us to disapprove. Hutch never got that she was nervous about telling us about Liz. He never got a lot of things about Molly. He just expects love to make everything simpler – I always figure love makes everything more complicated. It raises everyone’s expectations.

“Hey, David,” Liz said when she answered the door. She was wearing sweats and a t-shirt, and holding a tea cup in one hand. I’d never been able to convince her to call me Starsky – it used to bug me, but now I kinda like it. 

‘Am I interrupting?”

Liz is a writer of self-help books and works from home. “Nah. Slow start today.”

I followed her into the kitchen and she poured me a cup of tea. Today it was green and smelled vaguely of flowers and dirty feet.“Thanks.”Unfortunately, it tasted like it smelled. I added honey, stirred and hoped for the best.

“So what’s up? What’s he done?”

I like Liz. No bullshit. “Apparently, it’s what I’ve done. Or not done. He wants to friend me on Facebook.”

“And?”

“And I sort of said no.” I took another sip and tried not to make a face.

“I see.”

“And now he’s pissed. I guess I should just friend him. It’s not like I don’t want to friend him exactly. It’s more like why _should_ I friend him? We know everything there is to know about each other. And yes, I know how stupid this sounds. Fucking internet. Life was a lot simpler without it. We should just keep Google. And Amazon.Maybe IMDB. And ESPN. Definitely YouTube.”

“Right . . .”

“I know what I should do. I should just go home and let him friend me and I’ll friend him and we’ll all live happily ever after. One big friendly family.”I put the half-empty tea cup in the sink and hugged Liz quickly. “Thanks for the advice.” I closed the front door behind me.

“Glad I could help,” she called after me. I swear I heard laughing as I walked away.

 

So I friended him. Again. First time I made him my friend, he was three months out of the academy and had the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. The neatest hair. And you could’ve cut your finger on the crease in his pants.He was bright and shiny and determined to be the best cop Bay City had ever seen. I hated that about him, not his ambition, but the way it seemed like he was always setting himself up to fail. It made everything harder than it had to be – it’s like he could accept everyone’s faults but his own.

Took me a long time to convince him I loved him exactly as he was. That I could forgive him as easily as he forgave me. Took me even longer to get him to agree to dance with me at Molly and Liz’s wedding last year.

He never mentioned Facebook again. He puts comments up on my wall sometimes, or tags me when he thinks I should see something interesting.I know I’m lucky he can still find things to tell me after thirty years together.

But the next time he sends me a text message to tell me dinner’s ready, I may have to kill him.

 


End file.
